SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
January 2003
Volume 10, No. 1
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Losing the War
-> Wartime Miscellany
-> The Papal Kiss
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted
FEATURES
{{ Material dropped from features or changed solely for
reasons of space appears in double curly brackets.
Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks around
the emphasized words.}}
Losing the War
(page 1)
On Thanksgiving Day, suicide bombers blew up an
Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya, killing a dozen people. At
the same time, terrorists fired shoulder-borne anti-
aircraft missiles at an Israeli airliner taking off from
the nearby airport, narrowly missing it.
Al-Qaeda was suspected of being behind the
coordinated attacks, as well as an earlier bombing in
Bali that killed 200 tourists; but nobody can really
know. Terrorism is a game any number can play, and only
the players themselves know who they are. They may be
loosely related Islamic fanatics rather than a single
organization, more on the model of a Mafia than a state.
Militant Islamists are now known to be proliferating in
unlikely places, such as {{ South America's Triple
Border, }} the lawless area where Brazil, Argentina, and
Uruguay meet. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have
migrated there in recent years.
What seems most unlikely is that the terrorists in
Kenya had anything to do with Iraq -- the target of
President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism." Westerners
are only beginning to understand the turmoil in the
Muslim world, and Bush doesn't seem to grasp it at all.
Jonathan Raban, writing in the SEATTLE TIMES, reports
that the Islamists bitterly hate the Arab states Bush
persists in seeing as the problem; they dream of a huge
Muslim empire, a restored caliphate, without internal
borders, under Koranic law. They regard the Arab states
as artificial creations of Western imperalism (which they
are) and they consider their rulers "usurpers" who have
betrayed Islam. Raban notes that Osama bin Laden's
messages never refer to Saudi Arabia by name, since he
doesn't recognize it; in fact, few Arabs have any loyalty
to what the West thinks of as "Arab states."
This means that Bush is taking aim at the wrong
target. It may be deliberate on his part. Sensing that he
can't defeat al-Qaeda -- and can't even find it -- he may
have chosen a more palpable enemy who can easily be
scapegoated and defeated, one Arab villain serving his
purpose as well as another. That way he can claim to be
winning his war, thereby satisfying the public
expectation that he "do something about terrorism." And
forgetting his own words when he said that this is "a new
kind of war."
Since the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda has been strangely
quiet. If the Kenya attacks were its work, it's rather
surprising that it took so long to get around to using
cheap anti-aircraft missiles against passenger planes.
Even a few such operations could destroy the precarious
airline industry and make tourism virtually a thing of
the past.
{{ What gives? Has bin Laden run out of resources
already? That seems doubtful. Is he biding his time with
patient determination -- waiting, perhaps, for a real
Arab-American war to begin in Iraq, inflaming the whole
Muslim world and setting the stage for his next big
strike against the West?
{{ And what might such a strike be? It would
probably involve more than box-cutters. There are new
rumors that he has been buying small nuclear weapons from
former KGB men in Russia. A few of his "martyrs" in
London, Paris, or Washington could bring suicide bombing
to an unimaginable new level. }}
At first it seemed that a "war on terrorism" could
be neither won nor lost. Al-Qaeda and its allies could
never defeat the U.S. military in direct combat, but they
were too elusive and diffuse for the U.S. forces to
destroy. That assessment may prove too optimistic.
{{ If the Islamists can destroy one major Western
city, that will be that. The "war on terrorism" will be
lost. }}
Perhaps Bush should be preparing a contingency plan
for surrender -- but to whom? "To whom it may concern"?
Could we even be sure that a surrender, in the event,
say, of the destruction of Paris, would be accepted? Or
would the enemy take out a few more cities for good
measure? Bush clearly hasn't thought through such
possibilities. He has been madly confident of victory
from the start, with no conception of what defeat might
be like. He still thinks he is fighting his father's war.
{{ A decade ago, Francis Fukuyama announced "the end
of history." And a happy ending it was, with "democratic
capitalism" triumphant all over the world. What we may
face now is something like the literal end of modern
Western history. And it won't be happy. }}
Wartime Miscellany
(page 2)
Much has been written lately about "European anti-
Americanism," and it's almost all sheer nonsense.
Europeans aren't bombing U.S. embassies or killing
American diplomats; they're merely expressing disgust at
U.S. foreign policy, with its reckless arrogance. There
is plenty of real anti-Americanism, regrettably but
understandably, in the Middle East, which has taken the
brunt of that arrogance. But to say that Europe is anti-
American, for voicing civilized dismay at its American
friends' conduct, is to display the very hubris we are
being warned against. Naturally, the attempt to equate
criticism with violence comes chiefly from the same tribe
of neoconservatives who equate criticism of Israel with
anti-Semitism.
* * *
The Tribe now prefers the charge of "anti-
Americanism" to the stale charge of "anti-Semitism." The
latter bears a return address; everyone knows where it
comes from and what special ethnic interest it betokens.
Whereas the cry of "anti-Americanism" can enable one to
sound like an American patriot rather than a whiny Jew.
* * *
It has been estimated that every child born in
America today is born owing $100,000 -- his share of the
"national debt," imposed on him without his consent.
Consider what this means. It makes a mockery of the idea
that little Johnny enjoys "self-government." Little
Johnny is, in truth, a slave.
* * *
President and Mrs. Bush reportedly sent out a
million Christmas cards this year. I'm sure they have
many, many friends, but something tells me this is one of
the myriad things little Johnny will someday be paying
for.
* * *
I am happy to report that the German edition of my
book ALIAS SHAKESPEARE has received a long rave review in
one of Germany's leading newspapers, SUEDDEUTSCHE
ZEITUNG. The Germans, of course, adore Shakespeare and
insist that he sounds better in German than in English.
As I understand it, they believe that the original is a
sort of rough draft, that the author (whoever he was),
while doing his best, was forced to express himself in
his halting English because he knew no German. (Maybe the
same could be said of my own book.) Even if they're
wrong, the Germans must be given credit for being nuts
about Shakespeare.
* * *
My anarchist friend, colleague, and mentor Ronald
Neff has uttered one of his typically brilliant insights.
In a piece published on THE LAST DITCH website
(www.thornwalker.com/ditch) entitled "'Gun-Control'
Libertarians," he explains the futility of
"constitutional" government this way: just as some people
vainly believe that laws can keep guns and drugs out of
the hands of people who really want them, so the
conservative vainly believes that a constitution can
control legislators who are determined to circumvent it.
A constitution is only a law against making bad laws, as
it were; and experience amply demonstrates that such
"law-control" is just as unavailing as "gun-control" or
"drug-control." *Nothing* can make it work. Laws deter
only the law-abiding. The state-criminal is at least as
ingenious as the street criminal.
Exclusive to the electronic version:
Cardinal Bernard Law has resigned as archbishop of
Boston, as more details of his dereliction emerge in the
endless "pedophile" (actually, predatory homosexual)
scandals. It may be true enough that the media have
overblown the story, making sexual abuse by priests sound
more common than sexual abuse by rabbis, ministers,
sports coaches, school counselors, doctors, and other
classes of men with special opportunities for intimate
relations with the young. But Catholics aren't comforted
to learn that their priests are "no worse than" the
general population, or that their bishops have been
facilitating such outrages.
* * *
Trent Lott's supposed gaffe was nothing of the kind.
He paid a nice compliment to a centenarian at his
birthday party, and opportunists seized the chance to
feign being offended. Lott's subsequent apologies were
his real offenses: he pledged to atone for his "hurtful"
remarks by supporting all the socialist "civil rights"
policies he has always pretended to oppose on principle.
He was willing, in other words, to harm his country to
save his skin. Once again, desperate panic exposes the
real man.
The Papal Kiss
(pages 3-6)
One of the most amazing symbolic acts in the history
of the modern Catholic Church occurred on May 14, 1999,
when Pope John Paul II, attending an interfaith
conference in Iraq, publicly kissed the Koran. It is hard
to imagine how "ecumenical dialogue" can go further. This
is not your father's Catholic Church.
The papal kiss seemed to me far less likely to bring
Muslims into the Church than to drive Catholics out.
Surely the Vicar of Christ was aware that the Koran has
taught untold millions to deny Christ's divinity and
condemns believers in the Trinity to hell. Personal
charity to Muslims is one thing; honoring their holy book
is another. For the Pope himself to do so, in this public
manner, was not only without precedent, it was stunningly
*contrary* to all Catholic precedent. As he himself also
knew. No pope before the Second Vatican Council could
conceivably have done such a thing.
Since the Council, the Catholic Church has certainly
entered a new and extremely troubled phase in its long
history. Doctrines, liturgy, discipline, architecture,
vocabulary, and demeanor have all changed profoundly.
Mass attendance has plunged. So have vocations to the
priesthood. Priests, nuns, and theologians (of those who
remain within the Church at all, that is) openly defy the
Vatican -- often appealing to the spirit of the Council
itself. The laity routinely ignore Church teaching on
contraception, one of the few things that haven't
changed. (There is a widespread feeling that if so many
other things can be discarded or disregarded, so can
this.) Many Catholics no longer believe in the Real
Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Shocking sexual
scandals, implicating bishops (and forcing one cardinal
to resign his archbishopric), now appall even Catholics
inured to horrors. The Church has apologized to the world
for everything short of damaging the ozone layer. And the
Pope himself has publicly kissed the Koran.
All these things, in their various ways, are results
of Vatican II. The debate rages over whether (and to what
extent) they are direct results, or indirect and
unintended consequences. Dissidents who appeal to the
spirit of the Council often flout its letter. Some argue
that the bad results are mere abuses of the Council's
reforms. The trouble is that the ordinary Catholic --
encountering, say, altar girls or bizarre new liturgies
-- can't always tell which results are reforms and which
are abuses. In today's Church, anything can happen.
Is the Council to blame for the current turmoil in
Catholicism? Yes, say two "traditionalist" Catholics,
Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods Jr., in their
book THE GREAT FACADE (just published by the Remnant
Press in Wyoming, Minnesota). They condemn "the regime of
novelty" in the Church. They don't deny the authority of
the Pope and the Church; on the contrary, they insist on
the authority of the Pope and the validity of the
Council. They are neither sedevacantists (who hold that
St. Peter's chair is empty, that there has been no true
pope since 1958) nor schismatics; they agree that the
Council left intact the central Catholic teachings,
despite the strenuous efforts of liberals. But they
nevertheless contend that the Council was an "unmitigated
disaster."
One can argue that the Council changed only mere
nonessentials. This in fact is the view of most orthodox
Catholics. But Ferrara and Woods reply that there is
nothing "mere" about such "nonessentials" as the old
Latin (Tridentine) Mass. Replacing it with an entirely
new liturgy has proved deeply unsettling; so have most of
the conciliar reforms. The Council's adoption of such
Sixties neologisms (or buzzwords) as "ecumenism" and
"dialogue" -- never adequately defined, say the authors
-- has caused general confusion as to the status of the
Faith itself. Is this the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church, or not?
It certainly doesn't act like it. When the Pope
holds interfaith dialogue at the Vatican with Protestant
and even female "bishops" (who, in traditional Catholic
understanding, are mere laymen, lacking sacramental
ordination), treating them as his peers, never mind what
the formal doctrine says. The Church's new body language
can only create doubt in the minds of believers. Nor have
all the ecumenical powwows since the Council produced
results in the way of reuniting the churches; today they
are further apart -- and further from Catholicism -- than
ever.
Some Catholics are embarrassed when the Pope kisses
the Koran, but the gesture springs from the ecumenical
enthusiasm of the Council. It will hardly do to argue
that the Pope doesn't understand the Council's true
message; he is, after all, the Pope, and he participated
in the Council himself. Who is better qualified to
understand it than he?
Yes, an argument can be made that the "essentials"
of the Faith haven't changed; but it's an increasingly
strained argument. The authors call this position "neo-
Catholic," impugning neither the orthodoxy nor the piety
of those who hold it. The position, unfortunately,
requires that the Pope be defended at every turn, that
even his casual and personal utterances be treated as
authoritative (if not virtually infallible) declarations,
that every racking change in the Church, so long as it is
properly authorized, be regarded as part of Catholic
tradition.
If liturgical forms are so inessential, the authors
ask, why not dispense with them altogether? The priest
could simply consecrate the bread and wine, pass them
out, and send everyone home. Obviously the Church has
always attached great gravity to the rites, through which
most Catholics have their most intimate contact with God
on this earth. It is vital that the rites feel holy, and
it is very hard for any novelty to seem holy.
Yet the Council's defenders, including the Pope
himself, have had to keep repeating that it did not
represent "a rupture with the past." As the authors say,
"It is remarkable that a pope would even have to make
such protestations about an ecumenical council." Never
before has a council's continuity with Catholic tradition
been in question. Avery Cardinal Dulles has even tried to
show that the Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom
is compatible with Pius IX's SYLLABUS OF ERRORS.
The neo-Catholic is, or tries to be, by his lights,
an obedient son of the Church, and he wants to believe
that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit at every
step. But according to Catholic teaching itself, God
protects the Church from error, not necessarily from
imprudence or outright folly. The authors contend that
Vatican II committed no substantive errors, but much
folly. And it urgently needs to be corrected.
With many citations, the authors show that many
earlier popes have condemned many of the very things the
postconciliar Church has adopted. In particular, those
popes condemned liturgical innovations and ecumenical
"dialogue" with heretics and unbelievers. They were
suspicious of innovation in general. "Far, far from our
priests be the love of novelty!" said Pope St. Pius X.
But a liturgy formed by centuries of gradual change was
abruptly traded in for a new model, and further local
innovations have proved impossible to stop. As the
authors remark, any pope before 1960 would be utterly
horrified by the Mass as celebrated today.
Of all the changes, the one that disturbs me most --
it still shocks and horrifies me -- is the change in the
mode of distributing Communion. The old altar rail at
which we knelt in awe and humility has been torn out.
Instead, the communicants stand, taking the Body of
Christ in their hands almost as if it were a snack. To me
this will always seem sacrilegious.
And real sacrilege is common. At an outdoor papal
mass in Des Moines, one witness recalls that Hosts were
passed through the crowd in cardboard boxes: "A group of
Hell's Angels helped themselves to Holy Communion. I saw
them washing down the Body of Christ with cans of beer."
And this was a *papal* mass.
But discipline is not altogether defunct: the
postconciliar Church has cracked down hard on the
traditionalists who want to restore the Tridentine Mass,
while even the most extreme liberals haven't suffered
excommunication. Many bishops are openly hostile to the
old Latin Mass.
John Paul II has hailed the recent reorientation of
the Church as "an utterly new way, quite unknown
previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council." But is
it really desirable for the Church to embrace the
"utterly new"? These words have never been a
recommendation to Catholics before. Even such important
doctrines as the Immaculate Conception, papal
infallibility, and the Assumption were in the air for
centuries before they were made binding dogmas.
As John Henry Newman wrote, one sign of a genuine
development, as opposed to a corruption, is that it
emerges gradually and naturally from all that has gone
before. It can't be entirely unexpected, or "utterly
new." The difference between a development and a
corruption is roughly the difference between growing a
beard and growing a tumor.
But Vatican II took everyone by surprise. Liberals,
heretics, and outright enemies of the Church were
delighted, even though they had hoped for even more
radical change. In WHY I AM A CATHOLIC (published by
Houghton Mifflin), Garry Wills writes scathingly of the
Church throughout history; he urges the abolition of the
priesthood and denies transubstantiation in the Mass; but
he has only praise for Vatican II -- and its results.
Liberal enthusiasm for the Council, even more than
the (too few!) conservative qualms, should have been a
warning. Looking back, it seems obvious -- to me, at
least -- that the Council was conceived and conducted in
the heady optimism of the early Sixties. This mood
affected, or infected, even the Church's hierarchy. The
reforms came without the caveats and restraints that, as
we see now only too well, should have accompanied them if
they were to be adopted at all. Does anyone still believe
in the ecumenical movement that was one of the Council's
great hopes? Like the Great Society, it now seems an old
dream from which we have sadly awakened, amid much ruin.
The Pope and other Catholic spokesmen still struggle
to explain that the work of the Council was good, despite
the wreckage of "reform." If all that wreckage was due to
"abuses," then at least very strong precautions should
have been taken against abuse. The Council should have
warned us most sternly that misapplications of its
reforms might produce such evil that it would have been
better if the Council had never been convened at all:
massive defections from the Church, weakened faith,
immorality, sacrilege, confusion, and, above all, the
damnation of countless souls.
And as soon as these results began to appear, the
Church should have moved, with all its might and energy,
to counteract them *immediately* -- even if that meant
reversing the Council's reforms. Yet there were no such
precautions, warnings, or counteractions. Apart from a
few papal encyclicals, the Church's hierarchy have acted
oblivious to the confusion within the Church and to the
sexual revolution in the entire Western world.
This isn't merely a Catholic concern. With the
decline of the Catholic Church, the West as a whole has
lost its moral center of gravity. There is no longer a
huge, adamantine conservative institution to exert the
restraining influence the Church once did. Before the
Council, nobody in American public life dared to advocate
abortion, and even in private life people were ashamed of
fornication and contraception. Since the Council, madly
centrifugal forces have prevailed everywhere. No wonder
many people feel that Satan is at the wheel.
Even the verbal style of official Church
pronouncements has changed. The preconciliar Church spoke
in the language of Aquinas, definite and defining; the
postconciliar Church speaks in a Hegelian idiom of flux,
in which nothing is yet complete, no tradition is fixed,
and nobody is quite a pagan or heretic. Not only are the
Council's own statements often ambiguous; they have
created confusion about the status of the Church's older
teachings, with which they sit uneasily. Many Catholics
have the impression that those old teachings have been
superseded -- or that they may be discarded in the
future. Nothing could be more unsettling to Catholics'
faith than this uncertainty about the permanence of *all*
Church teaching.
The Council's own teachings, insofar as they are
new, are rather ambiguous, and Catholics no doubt may
safely ignore most of them. But conservative Catholics
are loath to do so, while liberals enthusiastically
embrace the Council, even as they reject or minimize
earlier teachings. Never has such confusion reigned in
the Catholic Church.
A few years ago, in San Francisco, I was struck by
an arresting yet fittingly symbolic contrast. I passed
the new Catholic cathedral, an ugly monstrosity of modern
architecture, with no hint of piety or holiness about it.
Down the street was a small Unitarian church -- a humble
stone building in the quaint Protestant style, but at
least it looked like a place where someone might pray.
The Unitarian joint was trying to pass for a church,
while the Catholic joint was trying not to. How perfect.
John Paul II, now sadly aging and frail, will be
remembered as one of the towering figures of the
twentieth century. His is a powerful, magnetic, inspiring
personality. His life has spanned Nazi and Communist
tyranny in his native Poland, the Second Vatican Council,
upheaval in the Church, and of course a unique -- one
might almost say utterly new -- papacy. His elevation to
the Chair of Peter in 1978 brought to conservative
Catholics the kind of rapturous hope the Council brought
to liberals. They hoped and expected that he would end
the postconciliar abuses, excesses, and scandals in the
Church and restore the magnificent dignity and order of
traditional Catholicism.
But it hasn't happened. During his long and exciting
papacy, the state of the Church has only gotten worse.
Since 1965, when the Council ended, faithful Catholics
have become inured to horrors. With each new scandal
their reaction is "Oh no -- what next?" For Catholics
this has practically become a way of life. As I write
these words, Cardinal Law has been forced to resign as
archbishop of Boston because of the still-unfolding
homosexual and pedophile scandals. Does John Paul himself
bear any responsibility for his derelict and corrupt
bishops? The question has become unavoidable.
The Pope's defenders speak as if it were unthinkable
to blame the Pope at all, even after a reign of nearly a
quarter of a century. His authorized biographer, George
Weigel, predicts that he will be remembered as John Paul
the Great. This is an understandable tribute to a man
whose combined courage and charm inspire respect,
affection, and even adulation around the world. But is
the title really deserved?
With all due respect to the Holy Father, I think
not. I can only see his papacy as a great tragedy.
Like many tragic figures, the Pope has meant well.
But his reigning passion has been to salvage the work of
the disastrous Council in which he played an important
role. Sincerely devoted to orthodox Catholicism, he has
tried, by the sheer force of his personal charisma, to
reconcile the ancient Faith with the Council's novelties
-- especially liturgical "reform" and "ecumenical
dialogue," both of which have proved worse than
fruitless. The new liturgy has weakened, not
strengthened, the faith of ordinary Catholics; efforts at
reconciliation with unbelievers have produced only
momentary goodwill, followed by outrage and new demands
for capitulation.
Particularly incongruous have been the Pope's
apologies for the Church's historic conduct toward
Protestants, Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and even
Muslims. Can even a pope "repent" for other people's
putative sins? Doesn't such "repentance" amount to an
accusation against his predecessors, who can't defend
themselves from the grave? Is this not presumptuous and
unseemly? And, most important, doesn't it clearly have
the effect of convincing the Church's enemies and
detractors that they have been right all along -- even if
they give *this* Pope "credit" for admitting it? What
other effect could it have? Has John Paul really thought
he was converting souls by this approach? It has
certainly never been the approach of any previous pope;
perhaps for good and obvious reason. Yet this Pope clings
stubbornly to the ecumenical optimism of the Sixties.
This ecumenism has gone to bizarre and appalling
lengths with respect to the Chinese puppet church, the
openly schismatic Catholic Patriotic Association, founded
under Mao Zedong in 1957 and vigorously condemned by
Pius XII, who called its illicit consecration of bishops
"criminal and sacrilegious." This pseudo-Catholic body
expressly disavows loyalty to Rome and supports the
state's policy of forcing women to undergo abortions.
Meanwhile, Catholics loyal to Rome have been fiercely
persecuted and forced underground.
And Rome's response? Since the Council it has
courted the state "church," seeking "rapprochement"! It
professes vague concern for the persecuted Catholics,
while treating the Communist puppets as true Catholics
too. This ecumenical spirit has not been reciprocated.
When the Pope canonized 120 Chinese martyrs in the year
2000, the Patriotic "bishops" angrily denounced him.
Loyal Catholics who want to believe that the Pope
can do no wrong should observe that this Pope has told
the world that his predecessors have done many great
wrongs. And if that is true of previous popes, it may
also be true of this one. In spite of his own piety and
good intentions, shared, perhaps, with those previous
popes, he may be inflicting grave objective harm, both on
the Church and on the world it is ordered to convert.
Nothing in Catholic doctrine forbids Catholics to make
such a judgment, though they should of course do so only
with hesitation, respect, and charity. In principle, we
can all sin and err -- even priests, bishops, and popes.
And we have recently had plenty of reminders that this is
more than an abstract possibility.
But what about the Second Vatican Council? Should it
simply be discarded? Ferrara and Woods argue that it
should. They point to another disastrous council -- the
Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Called to
reconcile Monophysites to the Church, it produced such
muddled compromises that it merely aggravated the
divisions that already existed. It promulgated no
positive doctrine, and therefore no error, but it was
quickly recognized as a blunder, and its decisions were
allowed to lapse. The same could be done with Vatican II.
Or might have been done; the question is whether the
changes the Council wrought are so embedded by now that
they are practically beyond reversal. The job might take
more than a pope; it might require a new council, for
openers, followed by a long period of genuine reform and
return to preconciliar ways.
The authors also offer a hopeful sign which may
serve as a model for the recovery of the Church. A
traditionalist order of priests, the Society of St. John
Vianney in Campos, Brazil, now works and thrives
independently of the local bishop. It even has its own
bishop. Though the order was formed without papal
authorization, it has received the Pope's permission to
carry on. Minor differences with Rome have been quietly
reconciled.
The Pope's defenders, God bless them, remind me
somewhat of those political conservatives who deplore the
condition of the U.S. Government, while loyally exempting
Ronald Reagan from any blame. Surely this is as
unreasonable in the one case as in the other, though
understandable in both. Reagan, unlike John Paul II, came
to power without a burning hope of bettering the world;
but he too had great personal and symbolic appeal to
people who did remember, and hoped to restore, a better
world. And in both cases their most ardent followers were
left disappointed. But Reagan's failure lacked the
grandeur of tragedy. In that respect too he differs from
John Paul II.
NUGGETS
(*Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks
around the emphasized words.*)
I SEE DEAD PEOPLE: Since 1991, sanctions against Iraq
have caused countless civilian deaths -- by some reports,
hundreds of thousands of them, mostly children -- for
want of food, clean water, and medicine. Why don't such
sanctions count as "weapons of mass destruction"?
(page 2)
POSTHUMOUS JUDGMENTS: We can argue about whether, say,
Strom Thurmond or Abraham Lincoln was the more ardent
segregationist, but, either way, we should beware of the
notion that a man shouldn't be judged by the standards of
later times. If that were strictly true, there would be
no sense in *honoring* a man in later times either, would
there? (page 7)
A FOND FAREWELL: Al Gore has announced that he won't seek
the presidency in 2004 or, probably, ever again. The
relief and applause that greeted this news must have
reassured him that he'd made the right decision. Al,
we'll miss you, but ... well, we won't, really. (page 8)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
OUR ENEMIES' LIES: President G.W. Bush's threat to use
nukes against Iraq makes it pretty hard to answer those
Europeans, doesn't it?
THE GREAT EXCUSE: Socialism (in all its variants) always
results in economic harm; a full dose results in
disaster. Whereupon its advocates either charge that it
has been "betrayed" or explain that it takes time to
"build socialism"; *someday* it will work. (A little
socialism is painful, but a lot of it is -- eventually --
sheer bliss! As in the Soviet Union.) Whereas a free
market needs no excuses. Even a slight tax cut will have
quick and beneficial effects. So will a black market.
Economic freedom doesn't have to be "built," merely
released.
SAY NO MORE DEPT.: Writing in THE NATIONAL INTEREST,
neocon Charles Krauthammer defends -- no, celebrates --
the U.S. Government's global omnipotence. Paraphrasing
Benjamin Franklin, he exults, "History has given you an
empire, if you will keep it." Well, we obviously haven't
kept our Republic.
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* My Quest for "Firefly" (November 26, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021126.shtml
* Paying for the Bullet (November 28, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021128.shtml
* History, Coming Up! (December 3, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021203.shtml
* Seeing Both Sides (December 5, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021205.shtml
* America the Hated (December 12, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021212.shtml
* More than a Slogan (December 19, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/021219.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]